We don’t have a whole lot of information on the encounter, outside of the six lines of 400-year-old poetry, but we know Little Miss Muffet was frightened away when “along came a spider.” We can’t fault her for that, but we suspect, had she encountered instead the 2007 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder, she would not have fled, but may have leapt—curds, whey and all—into the front “racing-inspired” bucket seat, admired the Spyder’s flowing lines and demanded Humpty Dumpty buy one for her.

The new car is priced as low as $25,389, after all. Little Miss would want it in fire-engine red, with matching two-tone interior, windblocker, and central cupholders to firmly grasp both curds and whey.

Immediately boyfriend Humpty Dumpty, who long since changed his stage name to Shock G and went on to fame with the hip-hop hit “The Humpty Hump,” would notice the standard kickin’ 650-watt max (350 continuous), nine-speaker Rockford Fosgate audio system. “Imagine that, 650 watts standard,” he would say, listening to his sound laid down by The Underground in perfect clarity, helped by that monster forward-facing subwoofer bolted between the rear seats.

Those two traits—style and stereo—could be what the average Spyder buyer finds most important. In both arenas the new drop-top Eclipse is a hit. Beyond that, it’s also not bad. For instance, the 55 percent increase in torsional rigidity compared to the previous Spyder allows both larger wheels and a stiffer suspension.

The last Spyder needed an extra inch of tire sidewall and an extra 10 mm of suspension travel to absorb bumps and lessen the chassis torque. Because the 2007 model’s stiffness allows the suspension to do its job more precisely, the car now comes standard with 17-inch wheels with 225/50R tires (18-inch wheels with 235/45 rubber are optional) replacing the old model’s 16s.

There are stiffer antiroll bars front and rear, stiffer springs and shocks, too. The front end is held off the ground by MacPherson struts attached to a reinforced steel subframe, while the rear has five links and a coil spring connected to another stiff subframe.

Mitsubishi says the Spyder was engineered as a convertible from the get-go, with stiff crossmembers behind the back seats and behind the dash. Yet with the top down there is still some cowl shake. Putting the top up seems to damp the shake a little, though a fabric roof cannot change torsional rigidity.

With the top up you also get huge blind spots, particularly at the right rear corner. Top down, there is more wind buffeting at slower speeds than at freeway speeds, oddly enough. A windblocker is available.

So does the new stiffness mean the new Spyder is a real ragin’ sports car roadster? Not by the ragin’ roadster standards we’ve come to enjoy. Three of the four basic configurations are probably too boulevardier for what we would call enthusiast drivers.

The base GS Eclipse comes with a 2.4-liter, 162-hp four-cylinder driving the front wheels through either a five-speed manual or four-speed automatic. The GT is powered by a 3.8-liter, 260-hp V6 also driving the fronts. There is no all-wheel drive. The five-speed automatic in the GT is still not enough to be really fun, even when that trans is bumped into Sportronic mode, where the shifts are quicker (this thing has 36 shift maps!).

The V6 with six-speed manual feels like the best balance of power, weight and cornering. The power-to-weight ratio of the V6/manual is 1:14.4, exactly the same as the Mazda Miata. The car is not nearly as tossable as a Miata, since the Spyder outweighs it by almost 1300 pounds, but it doesn’t feel soft and floppy either.

Mitsubishi’s acceleration figures also suggest the V6/manual is the car for the sports-minded piloto, getting to 60 mph in 7.0 seconds; the V6/automatic gets there in 7.2 seconds. Times for the fours are predictably molasses-like, the manual posting 9.4 seconds and the automatic a wheezy 10.0.

So the V6/manual is the only version in which we feel everything works well together. The fours will go to those who like stylish design and powerful stereos over cornering ability. The V6 with automatic feels like it loses power and torque somewhere in the transmission, probably in the torque converter. While shifts are quicker in sport mode, they are still not quick enough for our tastes. For the average buyer, we suspect they are just fine.

That buyer will really like the new interior with its brightly contrasting colors, particularly where the interior shade matches the exterior. There is noticeably more room inside too, in almost every direction. The front seats are a big jump in quality, with beefy new side bolsters made of high-density foam and adjustable lumbar support standard for the driver.

Even the rear seats are not bad considering this is officially a 2+2 configuration and has to hide the folded power top (which it does well under a power tonneau). The gauges are maybe on the small side, we would have liked a bigger speedo, tach and shift indicator light, etc. But this Eclipse succeeds in style and sound and does well enough in everything else that it might have a nice, broad appeal.

Dave Schembri, recently former head of Mitsubishi Motor Sales America, says the new Spyder is intended for “Generation E, everybody.” Mitsubishi sees the Ford Mustang and Nissan 350Z convertibles as the most cross-shopped competitors, with the Miata, Volkswagen Beetle, Honda S2000 and the Toyota Solara in there as well. A V6 GT car starts at $28,269 while a fully loaded model likely won’t break $32,000.

And they had better start fast. Sales of the previous Spyder withered to 3249 cars by the end of 2005, a big drop from its high of 17,850 units in 2002, even in this fickle segment. Mitsubishi is having big problems outside the segment, though; sales are down everywhere. So this little ray of top-down sunshine may brighten its outlook considerably.

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